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Single Water District in California to Use 11 Times More Colorado River Water Than Southern Nevada Will Use in 2023

/in , /by /8newsnow.comby Duncan Phenix

Figuring out where the Colorado River’s water goes after Lake Mead and the Hoover Dam can be challenging to understand and is often incorrectly stated. So when the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation  published forecasted use of Colorado River water it is essential to analyze the numbers.

According to the USBR, the forecasted use for 2023 in the lower Colorado River basin is divided four ways: Nevada, Arizona, California and Mexico.

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Deadline for Colorado River Water Cuts Passes With No Agreement

/in , , /by /CBS 8 by Alex Kleinman Quoted: San Diego County Water Authority

The decades-old agreements that outline water rights to the Colorado River Basin are leading to an impasse on an issue affecting millions of people in the American Southwest.

On Jan. 31, the seven states that draw water from the basin had to come up with a plan to voluntarily cut back on using water from the basin. Six states — Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming — agreed on one proposal. But California, which is the state the uses the most water, rejected that plan and submitted its own.

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Colorado River Crisis is So Bad, Lakes Mead and Powell Are Unlikely to Refill in Our Lifetimes

/in , , /by /Los Angeles Timesby Rong-Gong Lin Ii and Ian James

The snowpack in the Sierra Nevada is the deepest it’s been in decades, but those storms that were a boon for Northern California won’t make much of a dent in the long-term water shortage for the Colorado River Basin — an essential source of supplies for Southern California.

In fact, the recent storms haven’t changed a view shared by many Southern California water managers: Don’t expect lakes Mead and Powell, the nation’s largest reservoirs, to fill up again anytime soon.

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Resistance is Futile – Agriculture is Key to Fixing Lower Colorado River Water Shortages

/in , , /by /California WaterBlog by Jay Lund and Josué Medellin-Azuara

The lower Colorado River has been out of balance for about 40 years, using more water than has been available.  As their reservoirs empty, the three lower basin states, federal government, and water users are getting around to addressing this problem.

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Will All This Rain Mean Lower Water Prices for Californians?

/in , /by /KRON 4by Travis Schlepp

January storms propelled California from a state of water scarcity to one of water optimism.

The drought outlook in much of the state has improved thanks to continued and steady precipitation, and with more than two months left in the wet season, snowfall in the Central Sierra mountains of California has already reached 100% of the average for an entire year.

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California Town Wonders if Restored Floodplain Prevented Disaster

/in , /by /Reutersby Daniel Trotta

When devastating floods swept California last month, the community of Grayson – a town of 1,300 people tucked between almond orchards and dairy farms where the San Joaquin and Tuolumne rivers converge – survived without major damage.

In the minds of some townspeople and experts, that was thanks partly to the 2,100 acres (850 hectares) of former farmland just across the San Joaquin that have been largely restored to a natural floodplain.

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Wet Winter Won’t Fix Colorado River Woes

/in , , /by /Yale Climate Connectionsby Bob Henson

Snowpack has been running well above average this winter across the Colorado River watershed. It’s a rare bright spot after 23 years of grinding megadrought brought the driest conditions in 1,200 years to the basin that supplies 40 million people in Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming, and Mexico.

Should the generous rains and mountain snows continue into spring, they could help head off a deeper water crisis, including perhaps an unprecedented loss of hydropower generation from severely depleted Lake Powell and Lake Mead.

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California Finds Itself Isolated, Alone in Battle Over Colorado River Water Cuts

/in , , /by /Los Angeles Timesby Ian James

After a key deadline passed this week without an agreement on how to address the Colorado River’s crisis, California is now sharply at odds with six other states over how to take less water from the shrinking river.

Now that California has rejected a plan offered by the rest of the region, the state has entered a political tug-of-war with high stakes. So why has the state that uses the most Colorado River water decided to go it alone?

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Recent Rains Are ‘Nowhere Near’ What California Might See in the Future, Climate Expert Says

/in , , /by /San Francisco Chronicleby Jack Lee

The atmospheric rivers that pummeled California are a far cry from what a series of extreme storms could potentially bring, climate scientist Daniel Swain said at a legislative hearing on Wednesday that explored the impacts of the recent storm sequence.

“We’re nowhere near the kinds of events that we think are possible in a warming climate,” said Swain, a researcher at UCLA and The Nature Conservancy.

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Despite an ‘Incredible’ Snowpack, Drought Not Over in California

/in , , /by /Courthouse News Serviceby Natalie Hanson

California may celebrate having double the expected snowpack after a string of atmospheric river storms, but state water experts warn that more needs to come to offset years of record-breaking drought.

At the season’s second monthly snowpack survey conducted Wednesday at Phillips Station — at the intersection of Highway 50 and Sierra-at-Tahoe Road — the California Department of Water Resources measured current snow depths and water content.

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